ktalkimist wrote:
By the way, a question for everyone: Is it important for you to have at least one sexy female character in the game?

To be honest, I have no idea how fanservice affects game sales, if it does at all. But in my personal opinion, having someone who is obviously sexy for the sake of fanservice sort of pulls me out of the game, moreso if there are more than one. If you're going to add a sexy character, make them interesting first, with the potential to be sexy if they want to show it. I've played games where they showed tons of fanservice and I felt nothing particularly attractive about it since they were just 2 dimensional boring characters.

On the other hand, I also dislike the opposite where they assume a strong female character is incapable of being sexy. Women enjoy being sexy if it's not demeaning to them, but they don't have to be stoic or slap men for being pervs if they make a single comment about their attractiveness.

I actually prefer games that don't have a sexy female character, unless there's a reason for them to be that way rather than pointless fanservice. If it's meaningless fanservice it sometimes steers me away from wanting to play the game. (Though I do know a lot of people have the opposite opinion.)

I don't think you can prove that putting more clothes on Alice in Zero Escape would have sold less copies, though. And whilst playing the game, the "nice looking female" characters in both games didn't feel particularly fanservicey besides their attire. As for me, that would never be a huge decider in whether to get a game in most cases, though as a guy I wouldn't particularly mind

We'll never go the fan service route because I personally think fan service is silly myself. There is probably a direct correlation somewhere between me not watching a lot of anime anymore and the advent of fan service moe anime series. Though I have to admit to some guilty pleasures, like putting Rise (Persona 4) in different outfits for no reason at all!